Since it was first sold off by Thatcher, England’s water service has been a failure. And successive Tory and Labour Westminster Governments have failed to address this.

In Scotland and Northern Ireland water is a public service. In Wales its delivered by a not-for-profit private company. These services are the responsibility of their respective national government. If you consider the health of our rivers, lochs and streams, Scotland significantly exceeds the European average for good health – at more than 60%. England, under Westminster’s management, achieves 0%.

It should be surprise to discover that England is the ONLY country in the World where 100% of water services have been sold to private for-profit companies. Water is an essential utility – why would you let a private company profit from it and invest at its whim? This would only work if the companies were very tightly regulated – but in Westminster’s OFWAT there has never been that tight regulation.

If you are a private company, your primary purpose is to generate dividends for your shareholders. These come from your profits. So making money is key. Generally Chief Executive Officers who provide large profits and a big return are duly rewarded with bigger salaries – and you can see this happening with English water companies.

So in England, the water company CEOs are collectively paid some £12m more per year than their peers in the other nations. And why would you bust a gut to deliver clean, cheap, water if you can make more profit (and get paid more) by just delivering the minimum the regulator makes you achieve?

It doesn’t stop at Water

Thatcher, and subsequent Tory and Labour governments in Westminster, have spent many years selling off many diverse publicy-owned UK organisations.

It started with the Travel company Thomas Cook in 1972 – covered the essential utilities that any other country would think are best left under public control – and most recently included Student Loans in 2017. Just about ALL now cost us more and deliver worst service as compared with other European countries where they remained in public ownership. And all in their pursuit of shareholder returns and CEO salary.

And the really shocking part of this sorry tale? Many of the owners of those sold-off public services are foriegn – including other European governments. So we have the ludicrous situation in electricity companies, for example, where EDF makes vast profits. EDF is owned by the French government – so its profits go towards subsidising French consumer pricing!